


Well Met

by Phrenotobe_Archive



Category: Hellboy (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2763272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe_Archive/pseuds/Phrenotobe_Archive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An arranged marriage party between the BPRD and the magical beings of New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well Met

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gryvon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gryvon/gifts).



It's midsummer's eve, where barriers are thin and magic is more closely to the fore. There's a wedding party here, a celebration with home-made cake and pots of honey garnishing the table, flies repulsed by elderflower leaves. This is a parley between two worlds. The BPRD are doing their best to keep relationships between the elves and humankind on the sweet side, forging connections with each other through communication and gifts from both ends. The official doing the handfasting is smoking a cigarette behind the bower on unevenly balanced goat legs, flicking ash away from himself, and the two small creatures in charge of scattering petals have got bored before things start and have hunkered down in his shadow to eat them instead.  
Hellboy is double fisting champagne flutes and talking to an elf about their children. He's very good at getting people to talk, even if it just means they curse at him a lot, but curses tend to slide off his back like water off of a duck. Abe is delicately picking through hoeurs'd'oveurs and eating all the salmon garnish first.  
You'd never think that there's an exchange program for this.  
The list of applicants for the exchange has got a lot of text boxes to fill - a laundry list of pre-requirements, preferences, notes about mythological experience and education.  
In the box provided, John writes a thoughtful five hundred words on why he wants to sign up. The rejected essay from the guy next to him states "It's the closest thing to fucking an alien" and he is bumped down a security level.  
There are multiple reasons for John wanting to try out for such a thing - He likes the smell of summer, for instance. Living with elves also beats Antarctica by a long mile, and he appreciates that living under new york makes for shorter travel times home for winter break than boarding a plane in an ice desert, and he's pretty much going to get new and interesting experiences from living so close to magical areas, so from an anthropological perspective, it's going to speak volumes that he really wants to read.  
He's also really glad to find that the part about sexuality is a write-in rather than a bunch of check boxes. It's pretty complicated.  
There's no time limit - just a deadline - and he posts it in with optimism rather than any real expectations. They call it a shortlist, but he's heard through the grapevine that it's a mile long. John didn't count on the call up from above to come within the decade.  
It turns out that when a guy wants you gone from popular circulation due to classified information with regards to big red, this kind of thing just happens with greater frequency. John has a lot of skills and attributes that elves appreciate and that the bureau don't particularly need, such as a talent for dancing, a mostly-unblemished face, minimal scars, flexibility - in mind and body - and a puppy-dog smile in his photographs that have him looking disarmingly gormless. Aside from a couple of blunders while supposed to be in charge of Hellboy, a lot of his record is astonishingly clear.  
So, on this night, warm breeze brushing his cheeks, John Meyers is in his wedding clothes.  
Nuada meets him, dapper in a pale tunic over dark pants, glittering sash thrown over one shoulder, strange and scarred as always. He has a concerned line between his eyebrows.  
"You are serious about this?" he asks, and John kind of wants to gesture to the laid-on food, multiple supernatural creatures dancing to taylor swift and the rented tux John had to get himself - and say hey, Prince Silverlance, this is a big thing, they even got an ice-cream machine! but instead John picks at his own buttons and settles for gazing at Nuada's face instead. He could look at it for hours and it isn't even conventionally pretty -  
"John," Hellboy grates, giving him a solid elbow, "Your boyfriend is talkin' to you."  
Nuada pulls back his shoulders and puffs up his chest like a warning, and John takes a step to brush a speck of lint from Nuada's sash, trying to diffuse the situation.  
"Stop," Nuada says, grasping John's wrist.  
"Uh," John says, "Well I can't fault him, you know? I was zoning out and he was walking past-" To catch a chunk of the massive boar turning over the fire, but that's a detail the Prince doesn't need to know, "-and just wanted to help. His heart is in the right place."  
He puts his other hand on Prince Nuada's chest carefully, brushing over where he thinks Nuada's might be. The prince taps the back of his hand with two fingers, mouth parting with a thin-lipped twist. Hellboy trudges onwards, striking a light for his cigar and avoiding what sounds like the build up to a spat.  
"What do you think are you doing," the prince hisses, honestly needless. His fingers curl, come to grip John's hard, almost wincingly so while the other stays holding John's wrist an inch from his clothes. John grips back in equal measure because he's not above being slightly petty to make a point.  
"Well," John says, "there's gotta be a heart in there somewhere, right?"  
Nuada's grip eases at last, and he does something swiftly with his hands, a furl of fingers to end up gripping both of John's hands in his own.  
"You said seven years?" he says, letting them drop.  
John tugs at his jacket, a hand up in his hair as a habit to smooth it down.  
"Yeah," he says, "Year and a day won't cut it."  
Nuada's mouth curls into half a smile, golden eyes in the dark pits of his face just as striking as the day they met.  
"Less a blink of my lifetime but a sneeze," he says, with a jovial air to his words. He turns for a moment to glance at the rest of the party, the shortling flower throwers being rebuked and handed new baskets of petals despite current evidence suggesting that it is not the best course of action.  
"Well, it's a solid chunk of mine," John says, "Pretty long engagement, right?"  
Nuada nods, a tilt of the head as he considers the fact a moment longer. People are beginning to assemble in front of the bower, the carved wooden faun arranging the book in his right hand and leafing through with his left.  
"More than I'd expect from an arranged marriage."  
John reaches for the prince's hands, weaving his fingers into the soft gaps and gently squeezing his knuckles.  
"Do you wanna go get married?" he says, with a little grin.  
Nuada pulls John a half-step forward, into the solid flat shape of his chest.  
"Was that a joke," he says, with a pull up on his mouth like he's trying not to laugh.  
"Well, sorta yes," John says, tipping his head to get closer to Nuada's mouth, "But also kinda no."


End file.
